It takes a moment for her to understand what it is.
A message from Will.
There’s been another tweet. Have sent screenshot.
With a shaky hand, Elin steels herself, clicks on the image below. Her stomach drops.
It hits her all at once. Disbelief. Fear. Disgust.
Raw emotion washing over her like breakers.
It’s her again, but unlike the last photograph, this hasn’t been scraped off a public site. It shows her at the beach in her wetsuit with her friend Astrid.
They’re both laughing at the camera, but the happy day has been spoiled. In the worst kind of way.
No. No.
They’ve gone for her eyes again; individual lines violently crisscrossing one another in a digital scrawl.
“What is it?” Steed asks, looking concerned.
“A tweet.”
He frowns. “About what’s happening?”
Shaking her head, she explains about the one Will had shown her before. “This one, it’s worse, somehow. The photo they’ve used . . . it was taken by my friend. Someone’s gone trawling through her social media to find it.” This feels almost as bad as what they’d done to the image itself. It’s as if someone’s taken her memory of that day and viciously trampled on it. A violation.
“Bloody trolls.” Steed shakes his head. “I know it’s no consolation, but another female officer I knew had a similar thing happen a few years ago. Not the photos, but someone kept posting this weird stuff to her house. She reported it, seemed to shut them up.” He hesitates. “Probably not personal.”
Elin minimizes the image, her skin crawling. “You’re right. If it happens again, I will, but for now it’ll have to wait. We need to find Farrah, set the wheels in motion for locking this place down.” She’s desperately trying to project a confidence she doesn’t feel, but as she walks to reception, her mind keeps stumbling on the photograph—her happiness erased in one violent scrawl.
* * *
—
The member of staff on duty at reception looks up and greets them with a practiced smile. While Steed returns it, Elin doesn’t, her eyes locked on the textile artwork on the wall behind her.
This time, as she looks, the small motifs of Reaper’s Rock woven through the fabric no longer recede as they did on first sight—now they’re all she can see. Tiny mirror images not only of the rocks but the stones in the cave.
“Is everything okay?” The receptionist looks at her, forehead creased in concern.
“Yes.” It’s an effort to tear her gaze away. “I was wondering if you knew where Farrah is?”
The woman gestures to the corner of the room. “She’s over there.”
Elin follows her gaze to see Farrah sitting on one of the sofas with a man. Heads bowed, they’re talking intently. “Thank you,” she murmurs.
As they make their way across the room, the sandwich Elin had hastily eaten a few moments ago feels like lead in her stomach, acid crawling up the back of her throat.
Swallowing it away, she stops beside Farrah, lightly touches her arm. “Sorry to interrupt, we—”
But before she’s able to finish, Farrah cuts her off with a brittle smile, eyes widening slightly, in warning. “Let me introduce you both to Ronan Delaney.”
58
Elin tries hard not to balk and she knows that when it comes, her smile is forced.
Seth’s father.
He gives a quick nod of greeting, and this close, Elin understands why she didn’t recognize him at first; there’s a marked contrast to the photograph she saw online.
It’s not the clothes—the white shirt and linen trousers look as expensive as they did in the picture—but there’s a rumpled, tired air about him. His silver hair is ruffled, his face creased with lines. Grief does this to people. Sucks the life from them, both mentally and physically.
Ronan extends a hand, the wristband of an expensive watch glinting under the spotlight overhead.
She reciprocates. “DS Elin Warner. Good to meet you.”
Steed then introduces himself, but Ronan’s eyes skim over him, come back to rest on Elin. “You’re the one who found Seth, I believe?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Elin says gently.
“I was just asking Farrah if he’d”—he swallows hard—“if you’d taken him away yet. I was in Devon anyway, for work. I wanted to see him.” Struggling to maintain his composure, he looks to the floor.
Elin exchanges a glance with Steed. This is always the worry in a situation like this; a bereaved relative taking matters into their own hands, not realizing what the reality of the situation might be. “It’s better you wait,” she says carefully. “Until we’re at the mortuary.”